


Human Nature

by feedmetothepolarbear



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Anxious Eiffel is my life, F/M, Secret Santa
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-24
Updated: 2017-12-24
Packaged: 2019-02-19 18:47:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13129809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feedmetothepolarbear/pseuds/feedmetothepolarbear
Summary: Doug Eiffel fears he made a mistake. Hera makes a decision.





	Human Nature

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Christmas, everyone! This is my Wolf 359 Secret Santa gift to donthavesexwithsam on tumblr. (And it isn’t even angst.) eiffera is perhaps my favorite friendship, even if I don’t ship it, so I hope that comes through!

Eiffel couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a panic attack. Or, at least, not one like this. For so long, it had just been… numb. A hollow panic, sitting in the base of his stomach and twisting his insides, but never touching his lungs. In some ways, that was worse. Humans were not meant to be numb, and feeling numb just felt wrong. But at that present moment in time, he would have taken it any day over not being able to freaking breathe.

How had he gotten here? How had he fallen back into this hole? It had all started so innocently. Hera had emailed him a link. They’d discovered a way of hooking Hera up to the internet, allowing her to communicate with them while they weren’t in Minkowski’s basement. The link, however, was not one of the dozens of cat videos that she’d initially sent all of them. It was a link to an article about androids, about progress made in AI and android science, allowing them to inhabit human bodies.

So they’d talked about it. Hera had really been pushing for it. She said that she was tired of living in Minkowski’s basement. She felt bad, because the servers needed to store her superhuman brain took up the entire basement. Eiffel usually sat on the steps so he wouldn’t overheat or accidentally step on the wrong cable. And even if she never showed it, Minkowski had to be sick of Eiffel showing up at least once a day to talk to her. And the science was there. Eiffel had been hesitant. It was risky. There was a risk of data corruption, a risk of data loss, a risk of things he didn’t understand but didn’t sound pleasant. And more importantly, it wasn’t reversible. If anything went wrong, if Hera was unhappy, they couldn’t do anything about it.

But she’d been so determined. And she also revealed that she’d already emailed the relevant experts volunteering herself as a subject, so it was too late to back out by that point.

They both knew that Minkowski would object. That was when Eiffel came up with a Doug Eiffel Patented Super Genius Plan. Even Hera said it was good. Mostly because Lovelace was going to be doing the hardest part, which involved getting Minkowski out of the house and keeping her out of the house.

That morning had gone off without a hitch. Lovelace has gotten Minkowski out of the house. Eiffel had gotten in without breaking anything. But the anxiety had started when the experts showed up. For a moment, just a moment, one of them looked like Maxwell. For a moment, he believed that she had come back from the dead for the sole purpose of telling them what an incredibly dumb idea this was. But then he blinked, and it was over. It was just a woman with a pixie cut and glasses who spoke in big words that meant nothing to him.

But he hadn’t been able to shake the feeling that they were doing something wrong, that they had made a huge mistake. Because if this went wrong, he had lost her. After everything, he’d lost his best friend, the person who he’d gone through hell with, the person who he’d never given up on and who had never given up on him, even when he’d made stupid, insensitive jokes and had just generally been an idiot. He was going to lose Hera. Something bad was going to happen, he knew it.

That was when the ice cold hand of fear had first grasped his chest, taking it like an old friend, a feeling that was far too familiar, even after all this time.

And then there had been a noise outside-  
And oh shit, what if it was Minkowski?  
And oh god, what if it wasn’t?  
They had been fools to believe they’d gotten away with hiding for this long-  
Minkowski was going to be furious-  
And now he actually couldn’t breathe-

“Eiffel?”  
“Lovelace? What’s- oh god. Doug, Doug, can you hear me?”

And now he’s dying all over again-  
And he can hear Minkowski and Lovelace talking to him but the words won’t sink in because if anything happens to Hera, it will be his fault for not stopping her, it will be his fault for not doing anything-

“Eiffel?”  
A voice, cutting through his panic like a stone into water. An unfamiliar voice but- that tone, it’s that tone-  
“Who- what-“  
Minkowski’s confused but he knows, he doesn’t know how he knows but he does.   
“Eiffel, are you okay?”  
And he still can’t breathe but it feels less like he’s drowning, he’s desperately swimming for the surface and-  
A cold hand rests on his.  
“Take a deep breath in, okay?”  
He can hear Minkowski and Lovelace talking but he can’t hear what they’re saying, he doesn’t want to any more. He takes a deep breath in.   
“And out. See, better already. One more, okay?”  
They take another breath. They breathe together.   
“Are you going to open your eyes?”  
He opens his eyes.  
And she’s right there, and she’s beautiful. Freckles across her nose like galaxies, eyes that are a little too green and a little too bright to be entirely natural, but they’re still friendly somehow. And that smile. It was what he’d always imagined.   
“Hera? Is that you?” He asks, and her hands tighten on his. She smiles even wider.  
“The one and only. I’m okay, Eiffel. I’m okay,” she says, in that voice that isn’t hers, but it’s better because it still sounds like hers and it doesn’t remind him of that monster. He doesn’t feel himself going for the hug, but suddenly his arms are wrapped around her, and she’s cold but she’s real and she’s there and he’s hugging Hera.   
“Hera?! What the- did you know about this?” Minkowski demands, presumably to Lovelace.  
“This is a hug, right?” Hera asks.   
“Yeah, this is a hug,” he says, and he’s still crying. But now it’s happy. Because she’s okay and he doesn’t have to be scared any more.   
“I like them,” she says.   
“You’re gonna get so many of them,” he replies.

Then there’s a cough behind them.   
“Oh god, who’s this now?” Minkowski declares as she turns around. Even from where he’s sitting, he sees her do the double take as well. But Minkowski was never as easily thrown as him.   
“Who the hell are you?” She demands of the doctor who looks so much like Maxwell.  
“Doctor Emma Richards. I’m here for Hera. Who I told to stay put.” There’s a slight glimmer of annoyance in her face, but it’s not harsh or angry.   
“We’ll talk about this later.” Minkowski declares, looking in turn at both Lovelace and Eiffel.

A few hours, a lecture from Minkowski, and far, far too many tests with ridiculously long names later, Hera and Eiffel were finally released to celebrate. Which, naturally enough, meant that Eiffel brought them both for burritos.

“So this is a burrito?” Hera asked, poking the wrapper. “How exactly did you microwave this?” She asked, provoking an eye roll from Eiffel.   
“Am I ever going to live that down?”  
“Nope, never.”  
“What exactly is it?”  
“A surprise.”  
“Eiffel.” Hera’s tone of voice, which he was all too familiar with, was emphasized by an expression that he’d always pictured when she’d used that tone of voice with him.  
“This humble burrito? It is the best invention known to humanity,” he declared dramatically. “Mexican rice, black beans, sour cream, cheese, and the best chili this world has ever seen. All wrapped up in a fresh tortilla and served to you fresh, ready for your enjoyment.” He started unwrapping the foil from his. Hera mimicked him, staring at it with apprehension. “Go on, dig in. Trust me. You’ll love it.” She sighed, took a deep breath, and took a mouthful.

Her face lit up immediately, provoking a huge grin from Eiffel. “This is amazing!” She said around a mouthful of burrito, accidentally spitting rice everywhere. Eiffel laughed.

“I know, right?” He said, biting into his own with equal enthusiasm. Hera engulfed hers in a time he was, frankly, massively impressed with. She even beat him by a fraction of a second, but he put it down to the head start she’d had.

He wanted to say that he’d planned the day perfectly to give her the best experience of humanity- but in reality, it was a whirlwind of “Oh my god, you need to try this!” Even still, it was one of the best days he’d had in… well, in forever. Seeing her smile, seeing her eyes light up like that… it made him so incredibly happy, lighting a fire in his chest that hadn’t felt like that in so long. And it was her, it was really her, every time it started to feel a little surreal she would say or do something that was so typically Hera that it shook away all doubt.

It took him a while to put his finger on what felt so good about that day. It took a while because it was an absence of something he’d stopped noticing about himself. But Eiffel was almost constantly anxious about something. He’d learned to keep the worst of it at bay- but he still worried. With Hera? He didn’t feel like that. He was so present, so focused on her and helping her experience the world for what it was that he wasn’t worrying.

He realized this as they sat on a bench, overlooking the sunset, and eating ice cream. Hera was barely paying attention to the sunset, she was so transfixed by her ice cream. Or, at least, he thought she was.

“Doug.”  
“Yeah, baby?”  
“I just want to say thank you.”  
“You’re very welcome. That ice cream is the best in town, I’ll buy you as much as you want-“  
“Not for the ice cream. But also, yes, for the ice cream.”  
“What?”  
“You’ve always been there. You’ve always been the one saying ‘yes you can’ when that stupid little voice in my head was telling me I couldn’t do it, that I wasn’t good enough. You always had such faith in me, even back when Hilbert… all the way back then. You believed in me when I didn’t. And you were scared today. But you let me do this because you knew it was what I wanted, and then you made today the best day ever. So… thank you. For being there. For keeping faith in me.” She smiled, that smile that was so infectious it made Eiffel smile without even realizing it.   
“No problem, baby.” He cleared his throat. “And… thank you. For earlier. For snapping me out of it. I… used to be in control of it. And lately… not so much. With everything that happened-“  
“It’s okay, Eiffel. I understand. They happened to me too, remember?” She said softly.  
“Yeah. God, we’re both an absolute mess, aren’t we?” He laughed.   
“We should probably do something about that.”  
“We’ve got all the time in the world to do it.”   
“Yeah.”  
They sat in silence for a bit, comfortable in the quiet, knowing the other was there. For the first time, confident the other was there.

 


End file.
